She lay in a dark corner of the shed – a sleek keel-less hull, shored up on high chocks, dusty and forelorn. At first sight she was not for me: a hull without a
keel presented fitting-out problems way beyond my experience (and probably beyond my means). In the immediate post-war years the price of lead was still high, and I would need about 2 1/2 tons of it. Drawings would have to be found, or a naval architect employed to re-design the keel.

Less inhibited was my friend, Steve. He fell instantly for the hull and the challenge it presented. True, he had no financial worries since I was going to be
the paymaster, but his enthusiasm soon persuaded me that this had to be the yacht we were looking for. Under the dust and dirt we found narrow mahogany planking in remarkable condition for her age, and down below the whole 36 feet of her varnished racing bull, unimpeded by any bulkheads, looked as good as new.

“How much?” was the all important question. The owner of Bursledon Shipyard, whose name escapes me after nearly 4O years, owned the hull. Subsequently, we learned that she was a ‘debt’ boat which explained the absence of a keel – the lead had been sold to settle yard bills. The answer – £60 for the hull, spars, rigging and a suit of sails – sounds today like the bargain of the century. But in 1952 it was still quite a lot of money for a young teacher with a growing family.

Zenith in 1924. Image from archive record AWDN.1.1 (C) Beken of Cowes.

I think the yard owner saw in us a couple of likely lads who would rid him of a hull too good to scrap but almost unsaleable without a keel. His charming soft-sell approach was irresistible when he pointed out a sister-ship lying close by, with a cast iron keel replacing the original and fitted out as a cruising yacht. Furthermore, there was an architect-designed ‘plug’ for the keel which we could borrow without charge. By the end of the day I was the proud owner of Zenith, 6-metre, designed and built by Fife in 1924, a successful yacht in the heydey of 6-metre racing in the ‘twenties and ‘thirties, a champion of the Q Class (with sail number Q8) when racing resumed in the Solent after the Second World War. She was built for Mr J Lauriston Lewis, and subsequent entries in Lloyds Register show that ownership passed to his daughter who, I believe, raced her in the United States. In the ‘thirties she was owned by Lt. Col. H.M.E.Bradshaw, described by Susannah Ritchie in her book ‘Solent Days and Ways’ as “a large ginger-haired man with a powerful voice and splended record. Appropriately his first name was Hercules but he was known as ‘Monty’ …… for thirteen years he held the record for the best time in the Round-the-Island race, sailed in Ronnie Burton’s Iskareen and he had many successes with his 6-metre Zenith.

In 1952 it must be admitted that Steve and I knew very little about 6-metre or any of the International Rating classes other than that they were built to a formula which permitted some variation in design through a system of compensations: for example, a lengthening of the waterline to obtain a theoretical speed advantage would have to be offset by a reduced sail area, or some other factor. Thus the class could be raced as if it were ‘one design’ and without the necessity for handicapping, while designers could experiment in hull design (albeit within restricted limits) to the advantage of yacht design generally.

The principal dimensions of Zenith were 36 feet overall, breadth 6 feet 8 inches, and depth (with subsequent iron keel) 3,feet 6 inches. The original keel gave a design depth of 5 feet. The bow and counter overhangs amounted to almost a third of the overall length. The mast was 50 feet from truck to keelson and the boom 18 feet
long.

At the time we were not very concerned about these dimensions. Our main interest lay in the size and shape of the hog and whether the plug for an iron keel would fit without too much modification. We need not have worried – the match was accurate to within an eight of an inch, including keel bolt original locations.

We were planning to fit out Zenith as a cruising yacht with an auxiliary engine and decided to reduce the weight of the new keel by about 10 per cent to compensate for the engine, materials used in construction, fuel and water tanks, and for interior ballast to restore any imbalance which might arise.

In restrospect this was an error: we should have kept the balast keel intact, even though she might have floated below her designed marks, for Zenith proved to be very tender. It was easy enough to reduce the keel weight – the plug was built of 2 inch planks and we simply removed the top one (using it as a pattern for deadwood between hog and keel) before sending the plug away for casting. The cast keel, which weighed 2.3 tons, cost £64 delivered.

Zenith was constructed like a dinghy with steamed frames about 6 inches apart and every fourth frame made from sawn oak, finished to a [illegible] about one and a half inches square. Mahogany planking, three inches wide and finished to between half an inch and three eighths of an inch were fastened with copper rivets to the steamed frames and bronze screws to the sawn frames. Some of the latter had broken across the grain and had been strengthened by short frames spanning the fracture, or by large frames lying alongside. The steamed frames were virtually undamaged, though many of the rivets had lost their heads and had to be replaced. Some of the original steel floors were still intact, rusting rather thin. However, the main floors accommodating the keel bolts had been recently replaced with heavier wrought iron. Generally the 28-year old hull was in remarkably good condition and there was very little we had to do in the way of repairs and renewals.